The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

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      “Oh, I see,” said Jane, who didn’t. Ralph’s father, Luke, was said to admire the teachings of a German called Martin Luther, but she had never been clear about what they were.

      “Shhh!” said the man on Peter’s other side. “The king wants to say something.”

      They looked toward the top table, whereupon Jane discovered that she and Kate Howard were the object of the royal attention. King Henry, in fact, was raising a goblet to them both.

      “We have two young ladies here this evening who have not supped in our company before! Welcome, Mistress Kate Howard, Mistress Jane Sweetwater!”

      “Stand up! Stand straight!” hissed Thomas Cromwell, suddenly appearing beside the lower table and making get up at once gestures at Kate and Jane.

      “A toast!” boomed the genial monster in the seat of honour. “A toast to youth and beauty and gracious womanly charm. To Kate Howard, to Jane Sweetwater. Health and long life!”

      Glasses and goblets were raised. The toast was drunk. “Sit down,” muttered Cromwell.

      They sat, but His Majesty hadn’t finished. “Which one of you is Jane Sweetwater?” he demanded, and a prod from Cromwell brought Jane to her feet once more.

      “My queen tells me that you play the virginals well,” rumbled King Henry. “This evening, dear Mistress Sweetwater, you must play once more, for both of us.”

      Kate Howard, in her frivolous way, laughed again. It was a pretty and natural sound, different from the carefully cultivated laughter of many of the court ladies, who used mirth, as often as not, as a way of expressing polite scorn.

      But three seats away from Henry, Kate’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, turned what his niece, accurately enough, had described as his long face and his long nose toward Jane, stared at her with cold dark eyes, and without either speaking or moving, exuded toward her the information that he at least did not wish her well.

      It was an interminable evening. There was dancing immediately after supper, but the king danced only once with his wife. Jane, on the contrary, and to her alarm, was twice led onto the floor by King Henry. He smelt of rancid sweat and sandalwood soap—no doubt meant to disguise the sweat, which it hadn’t—and his big beefy hands were hot. Once more she saw Norfolk looking at her with dislike, although Kate Howard, too, was invited to dance twice. After that, both of them were bidden to accompany the queen to her quarters, where Henry presently joined them, and with Kate to turn the pages of the music for her, Jane was commanded to play.

      Both king and queen applauded and asked for more. It was late before she reached her bed. She found poor Lisa drooping in a seat in the dormitory.

      “I’m sorry, madam,” Lisa said, helping her to undress. “I’m supposed to be a tirewoman but just now a tired woman is what I feel like.”

      “So do I. I hope we can both rest a little tomorrow,” said Jane, much concerned.

      “I heard that the king was there tonight. Did you dance with him?”

      “Yes,” said Jane gloomily. “And played music for him and the queen afterward.”

      A pattern which was to be repeated time after time throughout the weeks that followed, with Henry’s beefy hands growing, it seemed, hotter and more embarrassingly enquiring during every dance, and Henry’s compliments, on her footwork, her music and her appearance, more lavish and disquieting. Until the second of May, when King Henry kissed her.

      I’ve been the biggest fool in Christendom, Sybil told herself as she scrambled out of bed and into her clothes and down the stairs of Stonecrop farmhouse, in order to plunge out into the cold and dark of a February morning to feed the sow and the poultry before breakfast.

      She had thought she was to be a dairymaid, but Stonecrop was short of hands and everyone seemed to do everything, as required. After breakfast she and Alison must muck out the stable and byre, and pile the steamy result on the enormous midden. Every kind of bodily waste, animal or human, went onto that midden, and before very long, Alison had said, they’d be taking the stinking stuff to the fields in baskets on their backs, and spreading it to fertilize the earth before the spring ploughing.

      She seemed to be permanently wet, cold and filthy. At Lynmouth she had worked but indoors, at least. And what was happening to Stephen all this time? She’d thought she didn’t care about him, but now she was constantly wondering how he was, whether he missed her, was looking for her, crying for her…

      I don’t wish he’d never been born, said Sybil to herself, shovelling horse dung. I just wish that I hadn’t.

      CHAPTER TEN

      Fearful Majesty 1540

      Court life did of course have its good moments. Jane attended a tournament and marvelled at the immense horses and heavily armoured riders as they charged each other, separated by a brightly coloured barrier but reaching across it with lethal-looking lances. She also liked walking in the grounds with the Queen and enjoyed dancing when King Henry wasn’t there. When he was, he never failed to partner her at least once.

      Peter Carew sometimes danced with her, which was much more agreeable, or strolled beside her when queen and courtiers went walking. It was from Peter that she learned that she was not imagining the unfriendly looks she kept receiving from the Duke of Norfolk.

      “He saw before the wedding that this marriage was going to be a catastrophe,” Carew said. “And straightaway he started getting notions about his niece. The gossip is that he’d put her into Henry’s bed himself if he got the chance. As a mistress or even a wife, if Henry manages to get out of this toil he’s in—and he might, from all I hear.”

      Jane had heard the same thing, mainly from Hanna, who sometimes, worriedly, talked to the English ladies.

      “The king sometimes sleeps in her chamber,” Hanna had said, “but all he does is kiss her good-night, and then kiss her good-morning and leave her. On the first night he fumbled about in a way she did not like, but from what she says, it came to naught and he doesn’t do even that now. She says she hopes for children, but, poor soul, she does not know how children are made. We do not tell her, for that is for the King to do. Besides, it is no use for her to know—things—if he will not do his part. We are anxious for her.”

      It seemed to Jane that the few happy occasions would always be overshadowed by things that were not happy at all. The miserable royal marriage was one of these. Her homesickness was another and she was made uncomfortable by Dorothy’s obvious resentment because the king never solicited her hand in dancing. Carew didn’t either. Dorothy, in fact, was a wallflower.

      Matters worsened rapidly when the court moved upstream to London and Whitehall Palace for the May Day celebrations.

      It was Jane’s first experience of the strange mixture of order and chaos which was King Henry’s court on the move. Instructions were exact. All personal belongings must be clearly labelled. Porters would take everything to the barges that were to transport baggage to Whitehall. Only the most important people could take furniture and bedding and hangings; the rest must accept what they found awaiting them at the other end.

      Jane made sure that her goods СКАЧАТЬ